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Frank Cook
We are very sorry to announce that our great friend Frank Cook died on Wednesday 19th August.
Those of you who have met Frank will know that his spirit and enthusiasm was extraordinary. Frank Cook was an MSc student at Schumacher College 2007-2008. He had a particular zest for plant knowledge but also a special warmth, bringing people into this and other amazing areas of his life. His influence at the College has been well beyond his studies with his contribution to our kitchen, garden and his general ethos now a well established part of College life.
You can read further details and more about Frank’s very unique work on his website www.plantsandhealers.com/
In Frank’s words – Peace to you
All at Schumacher College
ADDED 2 Sep 2009
You are invited to contribute your story about Frank on his website: http://www.plantsandhealers.com/yourstory.php
Schumacher College is part of the Dartington Hall Trust, a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and as a charity (company no. 1485560, charity no. 279756). Registered office: The Elmhirst Centre, Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EL, UK.
Frank Cook 1963-2009
Pearson Garden, Asheville NC, August 19, 2009. Just hours after his passing, Frank’s brother Ken spoke from the circle of nearly 200 friends holding hands around the garden. “I think he saw us all as plant beings and he certainly was one himself.” Muffled laughter mixed with tears. Frank Cook was the Banyan Tree.
If the name is not familiar, you’ll remember the man. Frank stood 6’3” tall with piercing blue eyes and waist length dreadlocks. He wore simple clothes and sandals and carried a satchel over his shoulder. In Chapel Hill, his home was a loft bed at the residence of Beth Williams and Alan Dehmer. He walked everywhere, once across the entire state of North Carolina, foraging for food along the way. Most of us in these modern times would die attempting such a trek. Frank feasted – both physically and spiritually.
Someone once said that we are born with two beings – one that dies and one that lives forever. That is certainly true for Frank Cook. Frank will always be known around the world for his plant knowledge and his journey to “meet” the 5000+ genera of plants. At 47 years old, he was 70% of the way to his goal. He’d chucked a promising career in computer science 20 years earlier to follow his heartsong, traveling to Namibia to meet Omumborombonga, the ancestral tree of life, and to India to meet Buckuchurbu, used to treat stomach upset.
Those of us lucky enough to cross His path were reacquainted with the native plants we loved as children. Frank could hang with the best Linnean taxonomist, but he “understood” plants more deeply – their medicinal qualities, their nutritional values, and their unique role in the interdependent ecology of nature. And he clearly loved them.
Frank would lean down and shade his small subjects with large hands and begin telling their story. The breath from his deep baritone voice seemed to lift the plantain or pepsisiwa from its roots, as he brushed the leaves from around their base. “Choose me, choose me,” you could imagine them saying. In those moments, we were children again, finding a long lost love. And he was an “indigenous” teacher.
The meals between walks were just as vibrant. Reminding us that most Americans eat just 25 species of plants a year, he’d make fresh bread and soup with at least 25 species gathered during his walk. The flavors and energy in his food were life giving. He’d make teas by day and meads at night, always sharing a batch from last year in a pass- around bottle. Frank’s blueberry and sumac meads were my favorite. His gatherings built benevolent communities — families with native knowledge and skills.
His “business model” baffled most. He worked for donations. You paid what you could, and that was enough to fund Frank’s travels to meet plants across the globe. He’d recently completed a Masters Degree at the Schumacher Institute in the UK and written a book titled “Emerging Planetary Medicines.” His subject matter had expanded to include “transition cultures” – those preparing for not a low-, but a no-carbon economy.
Frank had just returned from teaching engagements in the Southwest US, and before that in South America. What he thought was travel weariness was apparently a spreading parasitic infection, which spread rapidly this week and this morning claimed his sinewy body. Thousands around the world, and several hundred in Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and Asheville weep quietly at the loss of their friend and teacher. We are ever so grateful for his many gifts, for the many seeds he planted.
If he’d ever stayed in one place for more than a few months, I’m convinced that Frank’s cascading dreadlocks would have taken root, like the Banyan Tree, and grown other Frank Cooks. And if so, what a better world this would be. Then again, as I looked around Pearsons Garden this damp August night and reflected on past gatherings at LEAF and Pickards Mountain, I thought…that’s precisely what has happened.
Godspeed.
A Memorial Service for Frank Cook will be held at 6PM Sunday 8/23 at:
The Toben Home
Pickards Mountain
8300 Pickards Meadow Road
Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
(919) 619-5475
www.pickardsmountain.org
http://blogit.today.com/files/2009/01/largest_banyan_tree.jpg
Show video excerpt: Begin at 1:46 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y2dfw31G-Y
Be Mindful
Stretch beyond your comfort zone
Live in the sacred
Earth is Mother
He planned his schedule a year in advance. All of his brothers and sisters, all of his families were always slotted into that schedule. Paradoxically, Frank was the ultimate family man. We are his brothers, his sisters, his lovers, his children, his friends.
Frank was a seeker with an unquenchable thirst. He was always teaching and always learning. Life was sacred to him. Yesterday at noon, the clouds parted and under a glorious blue sky rimmed by the Appalachians, a beautiful assemblage of family and friends gathered to pay their respects. Whether it was the recent rains or something else, the plants and trees wept.
Frank’s mother described a young man with drive and intellect, who taught himself the Greek and Russian alphabet on tiles in the bathroom, while the family lived in Japan. In the eight grade, Frank decided to read the Bible. He did so from beginning to end. His mom and dad asked…“Who is this child?” At Duke, Frank was a distance runner, but that wasn’t challenge enough, so he became a triathlete.
Seventeen years ago, he altered his course. He’d taken a job after college in computer programming at Ross Perot’s EDS, and completed an eight day project in just two. He asked for the next six days off, but was told instead that he needed to start the next job. Frank couldn’t reconcile the unfairness in that model and as fate would have it, a colleague invited him to a sweat lodge that weekend.
As his brother Ken tells the story, it was during that sweat that Frank recalled losing consciousness and experiencing a wokeenin, when an ancient Native spirit enters the body. This spirit told him to focus on the plants. In 1992, Frank quit his job and traveled the country with two friends who later became his CA family, Paul and Jill. Their route followed several tours of the Grateful Dead and eventually led him to Seven Song, Green light and others. Seven Song reminded us yesterday that when he met Frank in 1995, Frank knew nothing about plants, except of course for one which he knew very well. But this journey was no escape…it was a mindful immersion.
The discipline of this brother was legendary, and he had found his mission.
Every morning, Frank arose at 6am and offered his nitrogen to the plant beings. Then he did yoga. His waking hours were spent in study, writing, or teaching. He ate only plants (with the exception of the occasionally dairy laden cookie) and he prepared his meals, often from wild foods he’d learned to forage. His mission was to meet the 5000 plant genera of the world. He spent nearly a third of every year walking the globe on that quest.
When he met plants, it was not to learn their name and move on. It was to become intimate with them, to know them deeply. He observed them in the context of their neighbors. He understood them in what Thomas Berry called a “communion of subjects, rather than a collection of objects.” He touched, smelled, and tasted them. He learned their medicine and their nutritive values. And he got a sense of their vibration and spirit. He had great respect for the plant beings, and because they fed him and healed him and gave him life, he saw himself as a plant being.
He brought that respect to his teaching. “When you know someone intimately, you want to learn everything about them,” he said. This man had the mental, spiritual, and physical capacity to know thousands of plant beings intimately. And he was willing to share his love and knowledge with others, with great reverence.
Sometimes we learn who our teachers are, only after they’re gone – the grandmother read as many stories as you could stay awake for, the school teacher that looked in your eyes and said “you’re remarkable,” even the dog or cat or horse that just listened and loved you without judgment. When they passed, we learned the pain of grief, but over time their memory brought comfort, even a smile.
This teacher was different — obvious from the start.
Sometimes God is not so subtle.
First, He looked like Jesus Christ. Simple message — pay attention. Second, he spoke of the simple and the sacred, and he did so with a deep soothing voice, absent of ego. Third, when he was finished his talks, he had a way of vanishing into the ethers, usually to a tent or ground cloth under the stars. He preserved the mystical.
He pushed his students hard. Teaching, then testing. Asking us to take the plants in as teas or smoke, tinctures or tonics. All the time deepening our intimacy with them and our connection with the communities of plants. Here was a mystical and practical world of living giving beings that we needed in our lives and who needed us to look after them.
As he pushed himself, so he pushed us – often outside our comfort zones, asking us to come with him on his journeys. Meg and I went to Peru, even as she was pregnant with Kaia, to meet and take in the beings from the Amazon and Andes. We trusted Frank as he stretched us beyond ourselves. We took in powerful plant beings with a shaman in the jungles of the Amazon. These were sacred ceremonies with sacred beings. He wanted us to know and revere these life-giving, healing…and sometimes deadly plant relatives. Every plant was significant and had a place on the green path.
What occurred through layers of plant immersions was a love story. We simply fell in love with green beings, with each other more deeply, and with our new family, which was Frank’s metafamily. Gaia the Earth Mother was right here all along, but we had taken her for granted on our way to work or school each day. She was a multi-faceted being, complex and beautiful, inhaling our exhale and exhaling our oxygen, offering medicines, sharing her food, her magnificence and teaching us the sacred.
And so we fell deeply in love with Mother Earth. And as everyone knows, what you love, you care for.
We also grew to love Frank and he became family to us. And as his family grew, he continued to care for each of us and fit us all into his increasingly dense calendar. We treasured his visits and marveled at his ability to be fully present to each of us. Frank never avoided human struggles either and took those on with the same discipline and fervor as his plant work. Yet, he approached them always from a place of reverence and respect.
Frank’s family grew to the thousands. It must have become very taxing to carry the responsibility of a thousand close friends. Some have difficulty with one.
We will miss his visits, his all consuming hugs, his dreads on our shoulders, his encouragement to keep forging ahead and to keep it flowing. He cared so deeply for everyone. Now he can be with all of us, all the time. And finally, his wish for us all to come together has come true.
Jessie and I had a private moment with Frank’s body a few days ago. Friends that were with him at the end spoke about the smile on his face. It was still there. He had walked so far in so few years. At 46, even his mother called him her mentor. It was time for him to rest.
Perhaps he had planted enough seeds and needed to give them sunlight to grow. The acorns beneath the oak rarely grow to maturity. Our great oak has fallen and we carry his acorns with us. May we honor his life by planting the seeds in fertile soil. (Pass out acorns.)
Be Mindful
Stretch beyond your comfort zone
Live in the sacred
Earth is Mother
Peace be with you brother. Namaste
— Tim Toben · Aug 25, 09:00 PM · #
I want to thank Frank, since he was in my house in Bogotá, Colombia, south America in February 2009 and one of his advises was I should do what I really want to do, what my heart said I should do…I remember he said “don´t wait so looong” with his sonorous voice. And I really decided to stop with the job I was doing to dedicate my life to work in an environmental education program through vegetable gardens with kids in Colombia in order to promote a holistic understanding of life and world which will permit us to live sustainably and more connected with nature.
Thanks Frank for these words which were sounding and sounding in my mind during 4 months and finally I decided to focus my efforts in my own believes. For me Frank is a good example of life to follow. Yesterday I was reading his dissertation book, where he describes how he also decided sixteen years ago to walk with GAIA. I said also since I think I am starting my own walk through the environmental program I am working on.
— Carolina Montoya · Sep 3, 03:30 PM · #
Hello Frank,
Lucky people who met you Frank, you are amazing! Thanks for bringing me in contact with your brother Ken in Chiang Mai – Thailand. I thank you because I have the feeling that it was al meant to be! Thanks for everything what you are doing from the spiritual world for us people on earth! Blessed about realising that living in a flow is fantastic! Lots of love to you and your loved ones on earth and in de Spiritual world! Anja
— Anja Scholten · Jul 10, 07:55 PM · #